Love, Loyalty & Other Lies
by KT-chan88
Summary: Why Loki attacked Midgard and what happened afterwards. Pretty depressing, lots of insanity involved, especially in the first chapter. Mature themes involved broken minds and dubious moral compasses rather than nudity. SPOILER ALERT


_Kill all…_

The sibilant hiss rattled in his skull.

_Son of Odin…_

And that was how he knew.

His gurgle of laughter could be mistaken for a rattling cough in his chest. His captors sneered around him. Implements of torture were applied, he was sure. His sense of self was a little fuzzy at that moment, colours, sounds and sensations danced just beyond his reach, making it difficult to understand anything.

Questions were flung at him, rapid and sinuous as snakes. He didn't like snakes; they were dust eaters and cold to the touch. Loki giggled when the questions grew more elaborate. He laughed within the confines of his mind. His madness making it all into a fun, fun, funny game.

_Loki Odinson. _The creature with curved teeth and menacing eyes hissed and stab at his joints and nerves where it should hurt but merely made the patterns around him crinkle and crack and breaking into several little shards. The shards were pretty.

The game lasted until his captors figure out how to put the beautiful glittering shards into a jar of their desired form. All of the painful jagged pieces stuffed and pounded and forced into something resembling what they thought _Loki Odinson_ was and is and will be and not what he really _was_ because not even _he_ knew what that was, is, will be-

_Loki son of Odin_

No! he screamed, half laughing half sobbing and half everything else-

_Fallen King_

Wrong! Wrongwrongwrong, so wrong, so wrong, so WRONG!

_King_, the voice insisted, _King of all that is fallen and rotting and putrid-_

No, no, nononono-

_Wretched unwanted Son of Odin._

He laughed because it was wrong. He laughed because it was right. Because everything was now wrong is now wrong and nothing will ever be right again-

_Weakling, _the voice glided like a knife through soft flesh.

All of Loki and everything of Loki shattered. _I am not weak_! His voice brittle and broken and shattering under the strength of Yggdrasil's power, his power, because Loki was not just a magic user but the conduit of nature and the very force of nature in of itself-

_Poor weak child_, the voice crooned, _soft, broken child_.

_Burn_ Loki screamed within his mind, _Burn Burn! Burn!_

The world burned with green fire and the Lord surveyed the room with a satisfied air as their latest prize proved its worth to them. With the Trickster under their thrall, the tesseract was now within their reach. All it would take was the right touch, the right push to assert the desired outcome.

_Soon_, the Lord thought

_All falls into his plans._

_The Trickster is the Key._

000000

_Do you know who you are?_

The voice echoed within the chambers of his mind. The syllables rattled against his skull, his eyes and dripped down his tongue.

_Your name, Fallen King._

"I… am Loki… Odinson…" wrongwrongwrong it was all wrong-

_Loki Odinson, the time is now. The time is right._

Nonononono-

_Seize your right to rule, Loki Odinson._

"I-"

_You are King, for you are better than them. They are nothing but insects, dusts upon your shoes._

"I am…"

_You are King, Loki Odinson._

"I am King… Loki…"

_Yes, for you are better than them. You are a god. Midgard is made to be ruled!_

"…made to… be ruled…" the Trickster parroted obediently. The Lord smiled kindly upon the wretched creature and spoke.

_Midgard is ripe for rule. Ripe for a good King._

"Midgard," Loki murmured, "Thorr…"

The Lord hissed, _Thor is the enemy_. _All who stands in our way is the enemy!_

"E-enemy,"

_Enemies must be destroyed. Retrieve the tesseract, and all enemies shall fall before us. _He hissed, closing the circle that ensorcelled the Trickster. _Retrieve the tesseract._

The Lord watched as the Fallen King gripped the staff with unnatural white fingers. The blue stone flashed in response. It was tricky work, manipulating the Trickster into his thrall, but the Lord had done it.

_Go, Loki Odinson._

_Embrace your destiny._

000000

It was all too easy.

The tesseract, the scientist and one of Midgard's famed heroes fell into his hands within minutes of him setting foot upon the dimension.

Weak, he thought fondly, and so eager to please.

He recognized the Midgard hero as the one who had been involved in taking Tho-_the enemy_ into custody, and the scientist, Eric Selvig, as the one who had aided the enemy from before. Both men would be useful to him, one to work on the tesseract and the other to… taunt the General of Fury. Loki giggled, his grip tightened on the staff pulsing with power. It would be fun, all so, so very, very fun. Timing, he reminded himself, trying to catch his skittering thoughts, timing was everything, is everything. Yes, timing. Always important when it comes to tricks. Very important.

He laughed to himself, his thoughts skipping like little stones, evading and leaping through the dark pit of _something_ that felt familiar yet not and doing his best to keep the darkness from edging into his vision. _Focus_. He thought absently. He had to- oh wow, the explosion was really quite spectacular. He hoped not too many people died. Not that it mattered anyway since they breed like rats, cats, bats or was it rabbats?

Never mind, there will always be plenty of them around.

It took the scientist less time than he had expected to figure out the correct way to use the tesseract. It put a lot of things ahead of schedule, not always a good thing when not all of the pieces were on board. But Loki was, is, nothing if not adaptable and Clint 'Hawkeye' Barton provided the perfect, perfect excuse to infiltrate a high society Midgard function and catch the eye of the heroes…

It was glorious to have those weak, leaderless Midgard insects kneel before him. Glorious and terrible because Loki knew the feeling did not really come from him not really when he knew from previous experience having Sif and the Bumbling Three knelt before him felt like nothing nothing nothingnothingnothing- he almost screamed when a stupid little Midgard insect stood and defy his will and oh it felt freeing when his thoughts come an accord to _destroy-_

It was pure adulterous joy and he almost screamed with pain and pleasure when The Man in Star Spangled Pants with a Plan foiled his strike and everything was going to plan-

It was Thor! It was Thor! It was Thor! It was Thor!

The Enemy! The Enemy! The Enemy! The Enemy!

Hah! Hahaha hee hee heee heeaaahhh!

It was fun, fun, _fun_ to see the enemy beaten up and whacked to pieces and oh if only he had thought to bring victuals to go with the show. Pleasure whizzed through him when the Man of Iron called him 'mine'. Adorable how the Star Spangled Man put him under Midgard's pathetic protection against the _enemy_ and Asgard.

When his hand pushed the button that sent Thor down to his death his mind had whited out on its own. He had seen the enemy survived higher falls, Mjolnar was his gift to him after all and will protect him against all odds. That the glass prison was spelled by him to shatter at less than five hundred feet above solid ground was of no consequence because it was a fail safe for _Loki_ and oh look, he had forgotten that little fact already-

Time. Time. He was running out of time.

The tesseract was ready and really he should place the thing somewhere isolated and far away where no Midgard cameras or heroes could detect the army of Chitauris until it was all too late, too late, too late for anyone to do anything but what was the fun in that? So he told Eric Selvig to set up the damn thing up Stark's too tall tower and with a grin and a quirk of his hands planted the thought into Stark's mind, because Stark was a genius with a head full of swirling ideas and what was one more thought swimming in his head?

Only, it was no fun and not glorious and hey! Here he was standing on top of the shiny tall tower screaming for attention-

_Come and get me bitches!_

Then the Man of Iron was standing in front of him armed with nothing but words, words, words just like Loki had nothing but words, words, lies and clever words and clever thoughts standing between what was him and not him and it was all he could do to just stand there and damn it he needed time!

He will control the man, perhaps the Man of Iron could be persuaded to make the top of his building explode in the name of attacking his enemy and oops, Loki had forgotten what was on top of this stupid tower…

Only the man has no heart, only metal and a white energy that made his fingers and wrist tingle and Loki was so angry that nothing was according to plan and just chuck the insufferable midget out of what looked like nothing but there was in fact glass and whoops! So sorry, but not really, and had to admit he was impressed by the flying thing that followed the mad mortal especially when it hit his head and clarity was upon him if only for a moment.

There was nothing to do next but wait, because he could not trust himself to do anything or not to do anything and 'guarding the tesserect' seemed like a good idea as any so he let himself look about counting the things dropping out of the hole in the sky when the enemy (_Thor. False Brother. Not King._) landed and pretended to care. He knew it was pretend because it could not be real. Nothing was real anymore but the numbness in his head and the lead on his tongue and the weight of what he had done (_Destroy. Kill. Tear._), will continue to do until someone just. Stop. Him.

Stabbing Thor, _enemy_, was so easy, too easy and nothing will prevent him from doing it again and again and _againagainagain_ until he threw himself away from the tower before the temptation overwhelmed him like it did the last time.

He laughed as he went after the woman. Laughed because he knew the Man of Iron was her protector and was given the duty to shoot down any and all that followed her tracks. He felt joy at the thought of being killed by the man who had claimed him '_Don't take my things_' because it felt good and the only thing he knew belonged to him anymore.

He dropped the staff, _oh no_, when he got to the tower again. There was onky the large green man and all of Loki was almost gone and all he could do was spout words, words, words that multiplied and crowded all of the things that made him_ Loki_.

"_I am better than you! I am a god!"_

He was… not exactly sure what happened next.

When his senses returned, _along with pain, pain, pain oh the glorious pain of the physical plain_, he giggled and stopped because,_ the rattle of broken shards in his chest pierced like knives, blunt knives_. _Ouch._ The Avengers were assembled in front of him. Hate and pain in their eyes and weapons in their hands. He could not help but grin at them because the jar that melded the pieces in the image of _Loki Odinson_ had shattered. He almost laughed at the ringing clearness in his head. Loki was Fire and Chaos and more fool the man or monster who thought he could be controlled.


End file.
